I have always found it odd that whenever the producers of TV, movies and records, are accused of setting a bad example for the kids, they always insist that their product is simply entertainment and that entertainment in no way influences youthful behavior. If they really believed it, they’d have to be even stupider than they are.

It’s not just that they’re every bit as aware as the rest of us that advertisers spend billions of dollars a year advertising their merchandise in the media, but additional fortunes are spent on product placement in motion pictures targeted to young people. They also know that advertisers get into bidding wars for the services of a LeBron James.

But the real proof that these people are lying through their teeth when they tell you that the tube lacks the power to influence kids is to be found on their shelves and their walls. All you have to do is check out the various plaques and scrolls with which they adorn their offices. Let a TV show’s young star be seen buckling up when he gets in his car, and the producer is sure to be honored for promoting safe driving. When years ago, the Fonz was shown to have a library card, librarians all over the country saw the number of young readers spike overnight. The producers received a ton of commendations for promoting literacy.

On the reverse side, when such terrible role models as Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears misbehave, the ripples are felt all across teenage America.

Some years ago, Charles Barkley, then a star in the NBA, said he didn’t sign on to serve as anybody’s good example. Instead, he announced that kids should use their parents as role models. If only it were that simple. Unfortunately, a large number of children don’t have fathers in their lives. But the sad truth is that even when there is a father in the house, kids rarely hold their hard-working dads in the same high regard they do basketball players and rock stars.

All in all, I’m glad I’m not young anymore. I’m even grateful I’m not raising a youngster. That’s because liberals are doing their best to destroy childhood.

I’m not saying it’s their intention, but it’s certainly how things are working out. It’s as if they can’t wait to hurry the sprouts through what should be their innocent years. Trying to turn something as joyful as Christmas into something as barren as the winter solstice is only one sad part of the campaign.

First, we can’t wait to get the tots out of the home and into pre-school. Then we get them into grammar school and pile on homework, lest they get the idea that childhood is supposed to be fun. Judging by the test scores, the homework is nothing but punishment for the sin of being young. It obviously isn’t for the purpose of education or so many teenagers wouldn’t be graduating from high school without math or language skills.

The one area in which young people are well ahead of their ancestors is in sexual matters. At a tender age or at least what should be a tender age, the girls are learning to put prophylactics on bananas and the boys are learning to swagger like pint-sized pimps.

I would like to lay most of the blame on Bill Clinton, who had parents all over the country being asked by their youngsters to define a blow job. But those perverted beauty pageants for five-year-olds such as JonBenet Ramsey had tainted the American landscape even before Clinton got around to tainting the Oval Office.

When I first began to realize how little concern we have for our children, aside from providing them with expensive sneakers and pricey electronic toys, was when I saw the light sentences doled out to pedophiles. Whenever one of these creatures abducts a youngster, it gets its share of media attention, but not nearly as much as when some college party girl goes missing in Mexico or Bermuda. Furthermore, nobody has yet explained why a pedophile, once caught and convicted, is ever released from prison or an asylum. But, then, liberal compassion tends to go to the victimizer and not the victim simply because, being such an abnormality, it allows them to feel extra special about themselves.

What really irks liberals, though, is smoking. That’s why Camels recently got into legal trouble in Pennsylvania for using a cartoon character in its cigarette advertising. The company had already suffered dire consequences because of their earlier use of Joe Camel. Frankly, I never understood why kids would rush out and begin smoking because of an ugly, hump-nosed, cartoon, especially when they already get to see all the cool liberal actors and rock stars smoking in real life.

However, be that as it may, the real war on kids is taking place in the classroom and the movie theater. That’s where the real terror is lurking these days, just waiting to ruin the dreams of children. It takes the form of nonstop propaganda about global warming.

When I was a child, the bogyman was an imaginary creature hiding under my bed. Now, thanks to Al Gore and his ilk, bogymen are lurching across the countryside like the zombies in horror movies, terrifying the kids. That’s all the kids, including the little sons and daughters of liberals. According to recent studies, a huge percentage of 10-year-olds believe the earth will be entirely under water before they’re grown-up. I call it child abuse, and if those parents weren’t a bunch of politically correct, brain-dead, pantywaists, they’d put a stop to it. Instead, they take their kids to see left-wing pap like “Earth,” and they cheer on people like Gore and Pelosi, who are making millions upon millions of dollars off their investments in this massive hoax. These self-righteous cretins love green, okay; greenbacks, that is.

Unlike Chicken Little, who insisted the sky was falling, and scared all the critters in the barnyard, these greedy little creeps are screaming that the ice is melting, and scaring all the kids in the schoolyard.